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The other day, I ran a polling project, asking you to consider the 2017 season overall. I wanted to know about your fan experiences, as followers of particular teams, and this is the same project I ran after last season, and after the season before. The initial post is always fun, for the dialogue that gets started, but the real meat is in the data analysis. So I always most look forward to the data analysis, which I’ll be discussing below. Thanks to the many thousands of you who participated in the voting, since, obviously, without votes, this would be an embarrassing failure. You know those polls you occasionally stumble upon with like three or four responses? That is my nightmare. Thank you for not making me live out my nightmare.

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The worst called strike of this season was thrown in the eighth inning of a game between the Astros and the Tigers on the second-to-last day of July. I measure these things by the distance between the location of the pitch and the nearest part of the rule-book strike zone, and, here, we have a called strike on a pitch that missed the zone by 9.8 inches. It’s not a pitch that’s out there on an island — there are always a bunch of called strikes on pitches that miss by six or seven or eight inches — but 9.8 inches is a hell of a distance. I’m holding up two fingers in front of me. Are they separated by 9.8 inches? I don’t know, but they’re separated by what my eyes estimate would be about 9.8 inches. Big miss, considering the umpire is *right there*. We’ve got the season’s worst called strike identified. And maybe the most amazing thing about it: no one cared. You couldn’t even bring yourself to care today. It’s impossible. You’ll see what I mean. But first, a brief statement.

I hate SunTrust Park. I’ve never been there. It’s brand new. I’m sure a lot of thought went into its design, and I’m sure it has its perks. All the new ballparks have their perks. I don’t care about the SunTrust Park design or amenities. I care about the SunTrust Park technology. And the pitch-tracking data from SunTrust Park is garbage. It’s horribly calibrated, and it makes a project like this super annoying. I looked at dozens and dozens of potential worst called strikes. The bulk of the candidates were thrown in Atlanta, and all of them were off. By, like, several inches, in different directions. That’s been aggravating for me, today, but there are also some broader implications.

Pitch locations feed into a lot of the data we like to use. And if you can’t trust the pitch locations, you can’t trust the data. Incorrect locations would affect, say, zone rates. They’d affect chase rates. They’d affect framing metrics. I hope that people smarter than me are aware of this. I hope they’re working to fix this, if they haven’t already. There’s no excuse. In its initial year of existence, SunTrust Park was messed up. Not in a way many people would ever notice, but *I* noticed, and right now I’m the one writing.

Okay, now back to the worst called strike. We’re not going to Atlanta. We’re going to Detroit!

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Some of you might be sick of hearing about him by now, I don’t know, but I’m endlessly fascinated by the fact that Aaron Judge just put in a whole season as the best player in baseball. Now, sure, that’s just me looking at WAR, and, sure, it was only possible because Mike Trout got injured, but think about what Judge was before, and think about what he became. We like to tell ourselves that we can see the best players coming. Judge, in spring training, was a major question mark. In his initial cup of coffee, he batted .179 with almost three times as many strikeouts as hits. Judge was terrible, and then, almost without warning, he was the best. That’s incredible!

Judge is endlessly fascinating just in general. One of the other interesting things about him is the sense I get that people remain unconvinced. Like, we all saw what he did in 2017 — it was impossible not to — but the jury’s still out on what Judge really, truly *is*. The playoffs left a certain impression. Judge was a fine hitter, by the results, but he struck out a whole bunch. He almost felt exposed, and there’s some doubt here that remains.

So this is another post built around some polls. There are three polls in here, the last of which will ask who you’d rather have next season: Aaron Judge or Paul Goldschmidt? The question itself is pointless, artificial. No one will actually have to make that choice in real life, certainly not based on WAR. But I want to know what all of you think. Judge is here for obvious reasons. Goldschmidt is here because he’s been super consistent. Nobody out there is a Paul Goldschmidt skeptic. Give this post feedback! Give this post the feedback I so deeply crave.

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The season’s complete, which means the numbers are official. This is convenient for a writer, because it means there shouldn’t be any issues anymore with comparing 2017 to another full season in the past. A full season is a full season. So how about a quick full-season review of the pitch-framing data? There’s something interesting going on. Something dramatic, something that shakes the foundation of the numbers themselves. I have the graphs to prove it.

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Zack Cozart is going to be an interesting free agent. I mean, at the major-league level, they’re all interesting free agents, but Cozart’s case is particularly intriguing, given his late-blooming power. Cozart seems like one of those guys who was built to take full advantage of a slightly livelier baseball, and given that he’s also a capable shortstop, he’s a valuable asset as long as his power exists. Cozart might not strike it super rich in the coming months, but he’ll get a healthy guarantee from someone. Teams like shortstops who can hit.

Speaking of which, kind of: Zach Vincej. I admit that this is going out on a limb. Not only was Vincej claimed by the Mariners off waivers from the Reds; the Mariners then outrighted Vincej to Triple-A, meaning he’s not on the 40-man roster. Vincej has been freely available, and I wouldn’t say there’s been a feeding frenzy. You probably haven’t heard of him. I hadn’t heard of him. Vincej is not, and never has been, a top prospect. He’s a 26-year-old with nine major-league at-bats.

But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. So I felt compelled to put this in writing. Vincej seems like a run-of-the-mill minor-league infielder. Yet he might be just the sort of player who’d most benefit from a promotion.

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Every year, around this time, I look forward to this post. I look forward to it because it checks the two boxes most important to me as a writer: the post is always popular, and I don’t have to try to come up with a new idea. It’s always the same idea, and it’s always the same basic research. What changes are the names and the dates and the numbers. It’s not that the research and prep are easy, but finding an idea is usually the challenge. That’s not a concern when you have a recurring series.

That being said, I get nervous. I always want to write about the worst called ball of the season, but, around the All-Star break, I tend to write about the worst called ball of the first half. Here’s this year’s. If that stands up as the worst called ball overall, then I’d have to decide if I want to write a second time about the same event. It’s preferable, to me, that the second half contain a ball that’s objectively even worse. The odds of that aren’t great; the second half is shorter than the first. They’re not actually halves at all.

Excitement and nervousness. My fingers are always crossed. This year, I got lucky again. The worst called ball of the first half was thrown on June 18. The worst called ball of the whole season was thrown on August 20. It was worse by a fraction of a fraction of one inch. The pitch-tracking technology isn’t truly that precise, to begin with. And this all depends on the upper and lower strike-zone boundaries, which are subjective, since they change for every hitter. I don’t have 100% confidence that the ball on August 20 was worse. But my confidence level is at least, I don’t know, 51%. That’s good enough to proceed.

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From my own perspective, at least, it’s always weird to turn the page. At some point, the content stops being about the season that was, and it starts focusing on the season ahead. There’s a transition period, but it’s not well defined, and shortly after the climax of the World Series, it’s just…done. It’s gone, and everyone starts to look forward. You never want to dwell on a season that’s completed, but you also don’t want to just skip that easily past the answers to the questions we were asking for months.

I don’t have much longer to write about 2017. You don’t have much longer to think about 2017. Unless you’re an Astros fan, in which case, yeah, keep on replaying everything in your mind. You’ve earned that. But now is the time for me to repeat the same polling project I’ve published twice before. While the 2017 season is still somewhat fresh in your minds, I’d like to analyze your collective brains. With your permission, of course.

This is a post with 30 polls, one for each team. Ideally I’d like you to only vote in the poll or polls corresponding to your favorite team(s). Some of you might be fans of baseball more than you’re fans of one team in particular, and in that case, either don’t vote at all, or vote for the team you think you care about the most. It’s up to you. It’s all up to you. For each team, I’ve asked a simple question. How was your experience being a fan of the given team this season? There’s no wrong answer, and your feeling is personal to you. But if you’d like to share it, please do so. This shouldn’t take much in the way of mental gymnastics. Were you happy? Were you disappointed? How disappointed were you? Do you love watching every game, no matter the score and no matter the standings? Just how much did you get out of your investment? To what extent were you invested in the first place?

It’s easy, and I appreciate your participation, in advance. I’ll review the results later this week. In the past, I’ve written summary blurbs for each team, but I realized those blurbs might bias the responses, so now I’ve quit. Also, I’m lazy. Anyhow, all the polls are below. Hopefully the anchor text works to send you to your team directly! Thank you again for making these poll posts possible.

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I’ve become atypically interested in Clayton Kershaw’s second arm slot. You know, the one where he drops from being so over the top. It is, apparently, Kershaw’s natural arm angle, but it’s not the one he took to the majors. It’s not something he ever used as a Dodger until he felt sufficiently inspired by teammate Rich Hill. Hill also drops down from time to time, and although Kershaw doesn’t drop down by so much, it’s interesting to see him messing around in the first place. Clayton Kershaw is, after all, the best starting pitcher in the world.

Players are always attempting some kind of tweak. They’re forever in search of some kind of leg up. Chris Taylor made the tweak he needed to make in order to become a quality major-league hitter. What interests me about someone like Kershaw is — a player like Taylor is strongly incentivized to improve. His career literally depended on it. Kershaw hasn’t needed to improve. Kershaw has only ever struggled relative to himself. Kershaw didn’t need to start changing up his arm angle. He wanted to try it anyway. Kershaw experimented for the sake of taking his opponent by surprise.

I love that drive that he has. It’s probably suggestive of how Kershaw got so good at all. He doesn’t want anyone to get too comfortable. To bring this all home: Kershaw has unveiled a couple surprises. Late last year, he suddenly started dropping down. And this year, one month ago, Kershaw threw a curveball. It was a special curveball.

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In a sense, we’ve all been able to see this coming. For the Royals, it’s long been a race against time, trying to win as much as possible before the simultaneous free agencies of Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, and Mike Moustakas. This past season was pretty clearly going to be a last ride, and now the organization will have some tough decisions to make. They’ve already denied the Braves permission to interview Dayton Moore for a job in baseball ops. It might even stay that way. Moore might remain in Kansas City to try and see this through.

But let me share with you a fun fact. Maybe it’s more a collection of three related fun facts. You already knew that next year’s Royals were going to feel pretty different. You already knew they were likely to take a step back. It’s a good thing the core managed to win a World Series. Obviously, it’s always good to win a World Series. But the recent championship might take some of the edge off. What the Royals have left, as of today — theirs isn’t the best roster picture.

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